Re: Could you share and shed some more wisdom?

[Steven Knight]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Zachary Deretsky wrote:
> input*.txt contain a list of directories with Conscripts
> where python files are generated and Installed.
> 
> I am generating python_files.txt with the list of those
> files, but these files HAVE to be built and installed BEFORE 
> proceeding further. It seems, `cat ` trick is not applicable here.

Correct, that doesn't handle your situation.

> Maybe, the easiest is to ensure that those sibling Conscripts
> are built before the current one. It is against cons philosopy
> to prescribe the order of builds and installs, but is there a
> trick to do that? Depends on PHONEY targets?

What you essentially need is a way to read up a subset of the Conscript
files, build one or more targets, and then read other Conscript files.
There isn't any way to do this; the right solution to it is
Gary's AfterBuild

> I thought, from old postings, that AfterBuild supeceeded AddTarget,
> but apparently they complement each other. What does AddTarget do?

It adds a target to the list of command line targets that Cons will build,
providing a way to force something to be built in certain circumstances.
I can think of two uses for it:

    --  Using AddTarget in the middle of a Construct/Conscript
        file would force the target(s) to always be built, regardless
        of what was specified on the command line.

    --  Using AddTarget in code executed by AfterBuild provides a
        way to specify that, based on some intermediate state of the
        build, one or more additional targets must now be built.

Gary, does that match your intended uses for AddTarget?

        --SK